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JL-priU 1926

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EXPERIMENTER PUBLISHING COMPANY. NEW YORK. PUBLISH
RADIO NEWS - SCIENCE & INVENTION - RADIO REVIEW - AMAZING STORIES - RADIO INTERNACIONAL

Vol.1. No. I

JULES VERNE'S TOMBSTONE AT AMIENS
PORTRAYING HIS IMMORTALITY

EDITORIAL & GENERAL OFFICES: 53 Piirk PiMi. Nbw Ytit City
iV'MLnht-d by Experimenter Fubllshlnc Corapsny. Ioc

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Publishers o( SCIENCE &. INVENTION. RADIO NEWS.

AMAZING STORIES. RADIO REVIEW. RADIO INTERNACIONAL

Contents For April

Off on a Comet — or Hector Servadac

By Jules Verne 4

The New Accelerator
By H. G. Wells - 57

The Man From the Atom

By G- Peyton IV ertenbaker «..„. 62

The Thing From — Outside

By George Allen England 67

The Man Who Saved the Earth

By Justin Hall 74

The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar
By Edgar Allan Poe 92

OUR COVER

Depicts an Interesting scene from "Off on a Comet" in tliis
issnr. Saturn and ils rings in :i close-u',» view, arc silhouetted
against the sky.

"Off on a Comet." by Jules Verne, copyright 1911. by
Vincent Parke & Co., (Parlce, Austin & Lipscomb Co.)

In Our Next Issue:

"A TRIP TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH."

by Jules Verne. This book, comparatively little known,
is one of the most important of Verne's works. It holds
your interest from beginning to end, and is by far the
greatest work on this topic — namely the exploration of
the earth's center — that has ever appeared.

"THE CRYSTAL EGG," by H. G. Wells. One of the
most amazing tales ever written by Wells. A story you
will long remember by this master of scientifiction.

"THE RUNAWAY SKYSCRAPER," by Murray
Leinster. A story of the Fourth Dimension, in which
the 50-story Metropolitan Life skyscraper vanishes into
the Fourth Dimension. One of the most surprising tales
we have ever read.

"WHISPERING ETHER." by Charles S. Wolfe, a
radio story' that holds your interest and is responsible
for a good deal of gooscflcsh and chills running up and
down your spine.

"OFF ON A COMET/ by Jules Verne (Conclusion).

A number of other short stories by well-known
scientifiction writers.

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^Ik Man Who Saved the Iarth

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3^ CAwtin Tiall

Not a sound; the whole works a complicated mass covering a hundred acres, driving with a silence that was magic. Not a
whir nor friction. Like a living composite body pulsing and breathing the strange and mysterious force that had been evolved
from Huyck's theory of kinetics. The four great steel conduits running from the globes down the side of the mountain.
In Th* renter nt a point mldwsv between the globes, a massive steel needle hung on a pivot and pointed directly at the sun.

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING.

VEN the beginning. From the start the
whole thing has the precision of ma-
chine work. Fate and its working —
and the wonderful Providence which

watches over Man and his future. The

whole thing unerring: the incident, the work, the
calamity, and the martyr. In the retrospect of dis-
aster we may all of us grow strong in wisdom. Let
us go into history.

A hot July day. A sun of scant pity, and a
staggering street; panting thousands dragging
along, hatless; fans and parasols; the sultry ven-
geance of a real day of summer. A day of bursting
tires; hot pavements, and wrecked endeavor, heart-
aches for the seashore, for leafy bowers beside rip-
pling water, a day of broken hopes and listless am-
bition.

Perhaps Fate chose the day because of its heat
and because of its natural benefit on fecundity. We
have no way of knowing. But we do know this : the
date, the time, the meeting; the boy with the burn-
ing glass and the old doctor. So commonplace, so
trivial and hidden in obscurity! Who would have
guessed it? Yet it is — after the creation — one of
the most important dates in the world's history.

This is saying a whole lot. Let us go into it and
see what it amounts to. Let us trace the thing out
in history, weigh it up and balance it with sequence.

Of Charley Huyck we know nothing up to this
day. It is a thing which, for some reason, he has
always kejrt hidden. Recent investigation as to his
previous life and antecedents have availed us noth-
ing. Perhaps he could have told us; but as he has
gone down as the world's great martyr, there is no
hope of gaining from his lips what we would so
like to know.

After all, it does not
matter. We have the day
— the incident, and its
purport, and its climax of
sequence to the day of the
great disaster. Also we
have the blasted moun-
tains and the lake of blue
water which will ever live
with his memory. His
greatness is not of war-
fare, nor personal ambi-
tion; but of all mankind.
The wreaths that we be-
stow upon him have no
doubtful color. The man
who saved the earth!

From such a beginning,
Charley Huyck, lean and frail of body, with, even
then, the wistfulness of the idealist, and the eyes
of a poet. Charley Huyck, the boy, crossing the
hot pavement with his pack of papers; the much
treasured piece of glass in his pocket, and the
sun which only he should master burning down
upon him. A moment out of the ages; the turning
of a straw destined to out-balance all the previous
accumulation of man's history.

The sun was hot and burning, and the child — he
could not have been more than ten — cast a glance

E read of the days when the powers of radium
were yet unknown. It is told us thai burns were
produced by incautiously carrying a tube of
radium salts wi the pocket. And here in this story ive
arc told of a different power, opalescence, due to an-
other clement. It can destroy mountains, excavate cavi-
ties of immeasurable depths and kill human beings and
animals in multitude. The story opens with a poor little
boy experimenting with a burning glass. Then he be-
comes the hero of the story—he studies and eventually
finds himself able to destroy the earth. He exceeds
Archimedes in his power. And he suddenly finds that
he has unlocked a power that threatens this very dc~
situation. And the story depicts his horror at the
Frankenstein which he had unloosed, and tells of his
wild efforts to save humanity, and of the loss of the
cosmic discoveries of the tittle newsboy grown up to
be a great scientist.

over his shoulder. It was in the way of calcula-
tion. In the heyday of childhood he was not dragged
down by the heat and weather : he had the enthusi-
asm of his half-score of years and the joy of the
plaything. We will not presume to call it the spirit
of the scientist, though it was, perhaps, the spark
of latent investigation that was destined to lead
so far.

A moment picked out of destiny! A boy and a
plaything. Uncounted millions of boys have played
with glass and the sun rays. Who cannot remember
the little, round-burning dot in the palm of the
hand and the subsequent exclamation? Charley
Huyck had found a new toy, it was a simple thing
and as old as glass. Fate will ever be so in her
working.

And the doctor? Why should he have been wait-
ing? If it was not destiny, it was at least an ac-
cumulation of moment. In the heavy eye-glasses,
the square, close-cut beard; and his uncompromis-
ing fact-seeking expression. Those who knew Dr.
Robold are strong in the affirmation that he was the
antithesis of all emotion. He was the sternest prod-
uct of science: unbending, hardened by experiment,
and caustic in his condemnation of the frailness of
human nature.

It had been his one function to topple over the
castles of the foolish; with his hard-seeing wisdom
he had spotted sophistry where we thought it not.
Even into the castles of science he had gone like a
juggernaut. It is hard to have one's theories deri-
ded — yea, even for a scientist — and to be called a
fool! Dr. Robold knew no middle language;" he was
not relished by science.

His memory, as we have it, is that of an eccen-
tric. A man of slight compassion, abrupt of man-
ner and with no tact in speaking. Genius is often
so; it is a strange fact that many of the greatest
of men have been denied by their fellows. A great

man and laughter. He
was not accepted.

None of us know today
what it cost Dr. Robold.
He was not the man to
tell us. Perhaps Charley
Huyck might; but his lips
are sealed forever. We
only know that he retired
to the mountain, and of
the subsequent flood of
benefits that rained upon
mankind. And we still
denied him. The great
cynic on the mountain.
Of the secrets of the place
we know little. He was
not the man to accept the
investigator; he despised the curious. He had been
laughed at — let be — he would work alone on the
great moment of the future.

In the light of the past we may well bend knee
to the doctor and his protege, Charley Huyck. Two
men and destiny! Whdt would we be without them?
One shudders to think.

A little thing, and yet one of the greatest mo-
ments in the world's history. It must have been
Fate. Why was it that this stern man, who hated
all emotion, should so have unbended at this mo-

AMAZING STORIES

ment? That we cannot answer. But we can conjec-
ture. Mayhap it is this: We were all wrong; we
accepted the man's exterior and profession as the
fact of his marrow.

No man can lose all emotion. The doctor, was,
after all, even as ourselves — he was human. What-
ever may be said, we have the certainty of that mo-
ment—and of Charley Huyck.

The sun's rays were hot; they were burning; the
pavements were intolerable; the baked air in the
canyoned street was dancing like that of an oven ; a
day of dog-days. The boy crossing the street; his
arms full of papers, and the glass bulging in his
little hip-pocket.

At the curb he stopped. With such a sun it was
impossible to long forget his plaything. He drew
it carefully out of his pocket, lay down a paper and
began distancing his glass for the focus. He did
not notice the man beside him. Why should he?
The round dot, the brownish smoke, the red spark
and the flash of flame! He stamped upon it. A
moment out of boyhood; an experimental miracle
as old as the age of glass, and just as delightful.
The boy had spoiled the name of a great Governor
of a great State; but the paper was still salable.
He had had his moment. Mark that moment.

A hand touched his shoulder. The lad leaped up.

'Yessir. Star or Bulletin?"

"I'll take one of each," said the man. "There
now. I was just watching you. Do you know what
you were doing?"

"Yessir. Burning paper. Startin' fire. That's
the way the Indians did it."

The man smiled at the perversion of fact. There
is not such a distance between sticks and glass in
the age of childhood.

"I know," he said — "the Indians. But do you
know how it was done; the why — why the paper
began to blaze?"

"Yessir."

"All right, explain."

The boy looked up at him. He was a city boy
and used to the streets. Here was some old high-
brow challenging his wisdom. Of course he knew.

"It's the sun."

"There," laughed the man. "Of course. You
said you knew, but you don't. Why doesn't the sun,
without the glass, burn the paper? Tell me that."

The boy was still looking up at him; he saw that
the man was not like the others on the street. It
may be that the strange intimacy kindled into
being at that moment. Certainly it was a strange
unbending for the doctor.

"It would if it was hot enough or you could get
enough of it together."

"Ah! Then that is what the glass is for, is it?"

"Yessir."

"Concentration?"

"Con — I don't know, sir. But it's the sun. She's
sure some hot. I know a lot about the sun, sir. I've
studied it with the glass. The glass picks up all the
rays and puts them in one hole and that's what
burns the paper.

"It's lots of fun. Pd like to have a bigger one;
but it's all I've got. Why, do you know, if" I had a
glass big enough and a place to stand, I'd burn up
the earth?"

The old man laughed. "Why, Archimides! I
thought you were dead."

"My name ain't Archimedes. It's Charley
Huyck."

Again the old man laughed.

"Oh, is it? Well, that's a good name, too. And
if you keep on you'll make it famous as the name of
the other." Wherein he was foretelling history.
"Where do you live?"

The boy was still looking. Ordinarily he would
not have told, but he motioned back with his thumb.

"I don't live; I room over on Brennan Street."

"Oh, I see. You room. Where's your mother?"

"Search me; I never saw her."

"I see; and your father?"

"How do I know. He went floating when I was
four years old."

"Floating?"

"Yessir— to sea."

"So your mother's gone and your father's float-
ing. Archimedes is adrift. You go to school?"

•Yessir."
."What reader?"

"No reader. Sixth grade.

"I see. What school?"

"School Twenty-six. Say, it's hot. I can't stand
here all day. I've got to sell my papers."

The man pulled out a purse.

"I'll take the lot," he said. Then kindly: "My
boy, I would like to have you go with me."

It was a strange moment. A little thing with the
fates looking on. When destiny plays she picks
strange moments. This was one. Charley Huyck
went with Dr. Robold.

CHAPTER II.

THE POISON PALL.

We all of us remember that fatal day when the
news startled all of Oakland. No one can forget it.
At first it read like a newspaper hoax, in spite of
the oft-proclaimed veracity of the press, and we
were inclined to laughter. 'Twixt wonder at the
story and its impossibilities we were not a little
enthused at the nerve of the man who put it over.

It was in the days of dry reading. The world
had grown populous and of well-fed content. Our
soap-box artists had come to the point at last where
they preached, not disaster, but a full-bellied thanks
for the millennium that was here. A period of
Utopian quietness — no villain around the corner;
no man to covet the ox of his neighbor.

Quiet reading, you'll admit. Those were the days
of the millennium. Nothing ever happened. Here's
hoping they never come again.' And then:

Honestly, we were not to blame for bestowing
blessing out of our hearts upon that newspaperman.
Even if it were a hoax, it was at least something.

At high noon. The clock in the city hall had just
struck the hour that held the post 'twixt a.m. and
p.m., a hot day with a sky that was clear and azure ;
a quiet day of serene peace and contentment. A
strange and a portent moment. Looking back and
over the miracle we may conjecture that it was the
clearness of the atmosphere and the brightness of
the sun that helped to the impact of the disaster.
Knowing what we know now we can appreciate the
impulse of natural phenomena. It was not a mir-
acle.

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

The spot: Fourteenth and Broadway, Oakland,
California,

Fortunately the thousands of employees in the
stores about had not yet come out for their lunch-
eons. The lapse that it takes to put a hat on, or to
pat a ribbon, saved a thousand lives. One shudders
to think of what would have happened had the spot
been crowded. Even so, it was too impossible and
too terrible to be true. Such things could not hap-
pen.

At high noon: Two street-cars crossing Four-
teenth on Broadway — two cars with the-same joggle
and bump and the same aspect of any of a hundred
thousand at a traffic corner. The "wonder is — there
were so few people. A Telegraph car outgoing,
and a Broadway car coming in. The traffic police-
man at his post had just given his signal. Two
automobiles were passing and a single pedestrian,
so it is said, was working his way diagonally across
the corner. Of this we are not certain.

It was a moment that impinged on miracle. Even
as we recount it, knowing, as we do, the explana-
tion, we sense the impossibility of the event. A
phenomenon that holds out and, in spite of our find-
ings, lingers into the miraculous. To be and not to
be. One moment life and action, an ordinary scene
of existent monotony; and the next moment noth-
ing. The spot, the intersection of the street, the
passing street-cars, the two automobiles, pedestrian,
the policeman — non-existent! When events are in-
stantaneous reports are apt to be misleading. This
is what we find.

Some of those who beheld it, report a flash of
bluish white light; others that it was of a greenish
or even a violet hue; and others, no doubt of strong-
er vision, that it was not only of a predominant
color but that it was shot and sparkled with a
myriad specks of flame and burning.

It gave no warning and it made no sound; not
even a whir. Like a hot breath out of the void.
Whatever the forces that had focused, they were
destruction. There was no Fourteenth and Broad-
way. The two automobiles, the two street-cars, the
pedestrian, the policeman had been whiffed away
as if they had never existed. In place of the inter-
section of the thoroughfares was a yawning gulf
that looked down into the center of the earth to a
depth of nausea.

It was instantaneous; it was without sound; no
warning. A tremendous force of unlimited poten-
tiality had been loosed to kinetic violence. It was
the suddenness and the silence that belied credence.
We were accustomed to associate all disaster with
confusion; calamity has an affinity with pandemo-
nium, all things of terror climax into sound. In
this case there was no sound. Hence the wonder.

A hole or bore forty feet in diameter. Without
a particle of warning and without a bit of confu-
sion. The spectators one and all aver that at first
they took it for nothing more than the effect of
startled eyesight. Almost subtle. It was not until
after a full minute's reflection that they became
aware that a miracle had been wrought before their,
faces, t Then the crowd rushed up and with awe
and now awakened terror gazed down into that ter-
rible pit.

We say "terrible" because in this case it is an
exact adjective. The strangest hole that man ever

looked into. It was so deep that at first it appeared
to have no bottom; not even the strongest eyesight
could penetrate the smoldering blackness that
shrouded the depths descending. It took a stout
heart and courage to stand and hold one's head on
the brink for even a minute.

It was straight and precipitous; a perfect circle
in shape; with sides as smooth as the effect of ma-
chine work, the pavement and stone curb had been
cut as if by a razor. Of the two street cars, two
automobiles and their occupants there was nothing.
The whole thing so silent and complete. Not even
the spectators could really believe it.

It was a hard thing to believe. The newspapers
themselves, when the news came clamoring, accept-
ed it with reluctance. It was too much like a hoax.
Not until the most trusted reporters had gone and
had wired in their reports would they even con-
sider it. Then the whole world sat up and took
notice.

A miracle! Like Oakland's Press we all of us
doubted that hole. We had attained almost every-
thing that was worth the knowing; we were the
masters of the earth and its secrets and we were
proud of our wisdom; naturally we refused such
reports all out of reason. It must be a hoax.

But the wires were persistent. Came corrobora-
tion. A reliable news-gathering organization soon
was coming through with elaborate and detailed
accounts of just what was happening. We had the

news from the highest and most reputable author-
ity.

And still we doubted. It was the story itself
that brought the doubting; its touch on miracle.
It was too easy to pick on the reporter. There might
be a hole, and all that; but this thing of no explana-
tion! A bomb perhaps? No noise? Some new
explosive? No such thing? Well, how did we know?
It was better than a miracle.

Then came the scientists. As soon as could be
men of great minds had been hustled to the scene.
The world had long been accustomed to accept with-
out quibble the dictum of these great specialists
of fact. With their train of accomplishments be-
hind them we would hardly be consistent were we
to doubt them.

We know the scientist and his habits. He is the
one man who will believe nothing until it is proved.
It is his profession, and for that we pay him. He
can catch the smallest bug that ever crawled out
of an atom and give it a name so long that a Polish
wrestler, if he had to bear it, would break under the
burden. It is his very knack of getting in under
that has given us our civilization. You don't baffle
a scientist in our Utopia. It can't be done. Which
is one of the very reasons why we began to believe
in the miracle.

In a few moments a crowd of many thousands had
gathered about the spot; the throng grew so dense
that there was peril of some of them being crowded
into the pit at the center. It took all the spare
policemen of the city to beat them back far enough
to string ropes from the corners. For blocks the
streets were packed with wondering thousands.
Street traffic was impossible. It was necessary to
divert the cars to a roundabout route to keep the
arteries open to the suburbs.

Wild rumors spread over the city. No one knew

AMAZING STORIES

how many passengers had been upon the street cars.
The officials of the company, from the schedule,
could pick the numbers of the cars and their crews;
but who could tell of the occupants?

Telephones rang with tearful pleadings. When
the first rumors of the horror leaked out every wife
and mother felt the clutch of panic at her heart-
strings. It was a moment of historical psychology.
Out of our books we had read of this strange phase
of human nature that was wont to rise like a mad
screeching thing out of disaster. We had never
had it in Utopia.

It was rumbling at first and out of exaggeration;
as the tale passed farther back to the waiting
thousands it gained with the repetition. Grim and
terrible enough in fact, it ratioed up with reitera-
tion. Perhaps after all it was not psychology. The
average impulse of the human mind does not even
-up so exactly. In the light of what we now know
it may have been the poison that had leaked into
the air; the new element that was permeating the
atmosphere of the city.

At first it was spasmodic. The nearest witnesses
of the disaster were the first victims. A strange
malady began to spot out among fhose of the crowd
who had been at the spot of contact. This is to be
noticed. A strange affliction which from the viru-
lence and rapidity of action was quite puzzling to

the doctors.

Those among the physicians who would consent
to statement gave it out that it was breaking down
of tissue. Which of course it was; the new ele-
ment that was radiating through the atmosphere of

the city. They did not know it then.

The pity of it I The subtle, odorless pall was
silently shrouding out over the city. In a short
time the hospitals were full and it was necessary
to call in medical aid from San Francisco. They
had not even time for diagnosis. The new plague
was fatal almost at conception. Happily the scien-
tists made the discovery.

It was the pall. At the end of three hours it
was known that the death sheet was spreading out
over Oakland. We may thank our stars that it was
learned so early. Had the real warning come a few
hours later the death list would have been appalling.

A new element had been discovered; or if not a
new element, at least something which was tipping
over all the laws of the atmospheric envelope. A
new combination that was fatal. When the news
and the warning went out, panic fell upon the bay
shore.

But some men stuck. In the face of such terror
there were those who stayed and with grimness
and sacrifice hung to their posts for mankind.
There are some who had said that the stuff of
heroes had passed away. Let them then consider
the case of John Robinson.

Robinson was a telegraph operator. Until that
day he was a poor unknown; not a whit better
than his fellows. Now he has a name that will run
in history. In the face of what he knew he remained
under the blanket. The last words out of Oakland
— his last message :

"Whole city of Oakland in grip of strange mad-
ness. Keep out of Oakland," — following which
came a haphazard personal commentary:

"I can feel it coming on myself. It is like what

our ancestors must have felt when they were
getting drunk — alternating desires of fight and
singing — a strange sensation, light, and ecstatic
with a spasmodic twitching over the forehead.
Terribly thirsty. Will stick it out if I can get
enough water. Never so dry in my life."

Followed a lapse of silence. Then the last words:

"I guess we're done for. There is some poison
in the atmosphere — something. - It has leaked, of
course, out of this thing at Fourteenth and Broad-
way. Dr. Manson of the American Institute says
it is something new that is forming a fatal com-
bination ; but he cannot understand a new element ;
the quantity is too enormous.

"Populace has been warned out of the city. All
roads are packed with refugees. The Berkeley
Hills are covered as with flies — north, east, and
south and on the boats to Frisco. The poison, what-
ever it is, is advancing in a ring from Fourteenth
and Broadway. You have got to pass it to these
old boys of science. They are staying with that
ring. Already they have calculated the rate of its
advance and have given warning. They don't
know what it is, but they have figured just how
fast it is moving. They have saved the city.

"I am one of the few men now inside the wave.
Out of curiosity I have stuck. I have a jug and as
long as it lasts I shall stay. Strange feeling.
Dry, dry, dry, as if the juice of one's life cells was
turning into dust. Water evaporating almost in-
stantly. It cannot pass through glass. Whatever
the poison it has an affinity for moisture. Do not
understand it. I have had enough — "

That was all. After that there was no more
news out of Oakland. It is the only word that we
have out of the pall itself. It was short and dis-
connected and a bit slangy; but for all that a basis
from which to conjecture.

It is a strange and glorious thing how some men
will stick to the post of danger. This operator
knew that it meant death; but he held with duty.
Had he been a man of scientific training his in-
formation might have been of incalculable value.
However, may God bless his heroic soul!

What we know is thirst! The word that came
from the experts confirmed it. Some new element
of force was stealing or sapping the humidity out
of the atmosphere. Whether this was combining
and entering into a poison could not be determined.

Chemists worked frantically at the outposts of
the advancing ring. In four hours it had covered
the city; in six it had reached San Leandro, and
was advancing on toward Haywards.

It was a strange story and incredible from the
beginning. No wonder the world doubted. Such
a thing had never happened. We had accepted the
the law of judging the future by the past; by deduc-
tion; we were used to sequence and to law; to the
laws of Nature. This thing did look like a miracle;
which was merely because — as usually it is with
"miracles" — we could not understand it. Happily,
we can look back now and still place our faith in
Nature.

The world doubted and was afraid. Was this
peril to spread slowly over the whole state of Cali-
fornia and then on to the — world. Doubt always
precedes terror. A tense world waited. Then came
the word of reassurance — from the scientists:

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

"Danger past; vigor of the ring is abating. Cal-
culation has deduced that the wave is slowly de-
creasing in potentiality. It is too early yet to say
that there will be recessions, as the wave is just
reaching its zenith. What it is we cannot say; but
it cannot be inexplicable. After a little time it
will all be explained. Say to the world there is no
cause for alarm."

But the world was now aroused; as it doubted the
truth before, it doubted now the reassurance. Did
the scientists know? Could they have only seen
the future ! We know now that they did not. There
was but one man in all the world great enough
to foresee disaster. That man was Charley Huyck.

CHAPTER III

THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS

On the same day on which all this happened, a
young man, Pizzozi by name and of Italian paren-
tage, left the little town of lone in Amador County,
California, with a small truck-load of salt. He
was one of the cattlemen whose headquarters or
home-farms are clustered about the foot-hills of the
Sierras. In the wet season they stay with their
home-land in the valley; in the summer they pene-
trate into the mountains. Pizzozi had driven in
from the mountains the night before, after salt.
He had been on the road since midnight.

Two thousand salt-hungry cattle do not allow
time for gossip. With the thrift of his race, Joe
had loaded up his truck and after a running snatch
at breakfast was headed back into the mountains.
When the news out of Oakland was thrilling around
the world he was far into the Sierras.

The summer quarters of Pizzozi were close to
Mt. Heckla, whose looming shoulders rose square
in the center of the pasture of the three brothers.
It was not a noted mountain — that is, until this
day — and had no reason for a name other than
that it was a peak outstanding from the range; like
a thousand others; rugged, pine clad, coated with
deer-brush, red soil, and mountain miserie.

It was the' deer-brush that gave it value to the
Pizzozis — a succulent feed richer than alfalfa. In
the early summer they would come up with bony
cattle. When they returned in the fall they went
out driving beef-steaks. But inland cattle must
have more than forage. Salt is the tincture that
makes them healthy.

It was far past the time of the regular salting.
Pizzozi was in a hurry. It was nine o'clock when
he passed through the mining town of Jackson ; and
by twelve o'clock — the minute of the disaster — he
was well beyond the last little hamlet that linked
up with civilization. It was four o'clock when he
drew up at the little pine-sheltered cabin that was
his headquarters for the summer.

He had been on the road since midnight. He was
tired. The long weary hours of driving, the grades,
the unvaried stress though the deep red dust, the
heat, the stretch of a night and day had worn both
mind and muscle. It had been his turn to go after
salt; now that he was here, he could lie in for a
bit of rest while his brothers did the salting.

It was a peaceful spot! this cabin of the Piz-
zozis; nestled among the virgin shade trees, great
tall feathery sugar-pines with a mountain live-oak

spreading over the door yard. To the east the
rising heights of the Sierras, misty, gray-green,
undulating into the distance to the pink-white snow
crests of Little Alpine. Below in the canyon, the
waters of the Mokolurane; to the west the heavy
dark masses of Mt. Heckla, deep verdant in the cool
of coming evening.

Joe drew up under the shade of the live oak. The
air was full of cool, sweet scent of the afternoon.
No moment could have been more peaceful ; the blue
clear sky overhead, the breath of summer, and the
soothing spice of the pine trees. A shepherd dog
came bounding from the doorway to meet him.

It was his favorite cow dog. Usually when Joe
came back the dog would be far down the road to
forestall him. He had wondered, absently, coming
up, at the dog's delay. A dog is most of all a
creature of habit; only something unusual would
detain him. However the dog was here; as the
man drew up he rushed out to greet him. A rush,
a circle, a bark, and a whine of welcome. Perhaps
the dog had been asleep.

But Joe noticed that whine; he was wise in the
ways of dogs; when Ponto whined like that there
was something unusual. It was not effusive or
spontaneous; but rather of the delight of succor.
After scarce a minute of petting, the dog squatted
and faced to the westward. His whine was start •
ling; almost fearful.

Pizzozi knew that something was wrong. The
dog drew up, his stub tail erect, and his hair all
bristled; one look was for his master and the other
whining and alert to Mt. Heckla. Puzzled, Joe
gazed at the mountain. But he saw nothing.

Was it the canine instinct, or was it coincidence?
We have the aceount from Pizzozi. From the words
of the Italian, the dog was afraid. It was not the
way of Ponto; usually in the face of danger he
was alert and eager; now he drew away to the
cabin. Joe wondered.

Inside the shack he found nothing but evidence of
departure. There was no sign of his brothers. At
was his turn to go to sleep; he was wearied almost
to numbness, for forty-eight hours he had not closed
an eyelid. On the table were a few unwashed
dishes and crumbs of eating. One of the three rifles
that hung usually on the wall was missing; the cof*
fee pot was on the floor with the lid open. On the
bed the coverlets were mussed up. It was a temp-
tation to go to sleep. Back of him the open door
and Ponto. The whine of the dog drew his will
and his consciousness into correlation. A faint
rustle in the sugar-pines soughed from the canyon.

Joe watched the dog. The sun was just glowing
over the crest of the mountain ; on the western line
the deep lacy silhouettes of the pine trees and the
bare bald head of Heckla. What was it? His
brothers should be on hand for the salting; it was
not their custom to put things off for the morrow.
Shading his eyes he stepped out of the doorway.

The dog rose stealthily and walked behind him,
uneasily, with the same insistent whine and ruffled
hair. Joe listened. Only the mountain murmurs,
the sweet breath of the forest, and in the lapse
of bated breath the rippling melody of the river
far below him.

"What you see, Ponto? What you see?"

At the words the dog sniffed and advanced slight-

AMAZING STORIES

ly — a growl and then a sudden scurry to the heels
of his master. Ponto was afraid. It puzzled
Pizzozi. But whatever it was that roused his fear,
it was on ML Heckla.

This is one of the strange parts of the story —
the part the dog played, and what came after.
Although it is a trivial thing it is one of the most
inexplicable. Did the dog sense it? We have no
measure for the range of instinct, but we do have
it that before the destruction of Pompeii the beasts
roared in their cages. Still, knowing what we now
know, it is hard to accept the analogy. It may,
after all have been coincidence.

Nevertheless it decided Pizzozi. The cattle
needed salt. He would catch up his pinto and ride
over to the salt logs.

There is no moment in the cattle industry quite
like the salting on the range. It is not the most
spectacular perhaps, but surely it is not lacking in
intenseness. The way of Pizzozi was musical even
if not operatic. He had a long-range call, a rising
rhythm that for depth and tone had a peculiar
effect on the shattered stillness. It echoed and
reverberated, and peeled from the top to the bot-
tom of the mountain. The salt call is the talisman
of the mountains.

Alleewakoo!"

Two thousand cattle augmented by a thousand
strays held up their heads in answer. The sniff
of the welcome salt call ! Through the whole range
of the man's voice the stock stopped in their leafy
pasture and listened.

"Alleewakoo!"

An old cow bellowed. It was the beginning of
bedlam. From the bottom of the mountain to the
top and for miles beyond went forth the salt call.
Three thousand head bellowed to the delight of salt-
ing.

Pizzozi rode along. Each lope of his pinto
through the tall tangled miserie was accented.
"Alleewalioo! Alleewakoo!" The rending of brush,
the confusion, and pandemonium spread to the very
bottom of the leafy gulches. It is no place for a
pedestrian. Heads and tails erect, the cattle were
stampeding toward the logs.

A few head had beat him to it. These he quickly
drove away and cut the sack open. With haste he
poured it upon the logs; then he rode out of the
dust that for yards about the place was tramped
to the finest powder. The center of a herd of
salting range stock is no place for comfort. The
man rode away; to the left he ascended a low
knob where he would be safe from the stampede;
but close enough to distinguish the brands.

In no time the place was alive with milling stock.
Old cows, heifers, bulls, calves, steers rushed out
of the crashing brush into the clearing. There is
no moment exactly like it. What before had been
a broad clearing of brownish reddish dust was
trampled into a vast cloud of bellowing blur, a thou-
sand cattle, and still coming. From the farthest
height came the echoing call. Pizzozi glanced up
at the top of the mountain.

And then a strange thing happened.

From what we gathered from the excited ac-
counts of Pizzozi it was instantaneous; and yet by
the same words it was of such a peculiar and beau-
tiful effect as never to be forgotten. A bluish

azure shot though with a myriad" flecks of crimson,
a peculiar vividness of opalescence; the whole world
scintillating; the sky, the air, the mountain, a vast
flame of color so wide and so intense that there
seemed not a thing beside it. And instantaneous —
it was over almost before it was started. No noise
or warning, and no subsequent detonation : as
silent as winking and much, indeed, like the queer
blur of color induced by defective vision. All in
the fraction of a second. Pizzozi had been gazing
at the mountain. There was no mountain!

Neither were there cattle. Where before had
been the shade of the towering peak was now the
rays of the western sun. Where had been the blur
of the milling herd and its deafening pandemonium
was now a strange silence. The transparency of
the air was unbroken into the distance. Far off
lay a peaceful range in the sunset. There was
no mountain! Neither were there cattle!

For a moment the man had enough to do with
his plunging mustang. In the blur of the subse-
quent second Pizzozi remembers nothing but a
convulsion of fighting horseflesh bucking, twisting,
plunging, the gentle pinto suddenly maddened into
a demon. It required all' the skill of the cowman
to retain his saddle.

He did not know that he was riding on the rim
of Eternity. In his mind was the dim subconscious
realization of a thing that had happened. In spite
of all his efforts the horse fought backward. It
was some moments before he conquered. Then he
looked.

It was a slow, hesitant moment. One cannot ac-
count for what he will do in the open face of ,a
miracle. What the Italian beheld was enough for
terror. The sheer immensity of the thing was too
much for thinking.

At the first sight his simplex mind went numb
from sheer impotence; his terror to a degree frozen.
The whole of Mt. Heckla had been shorn away; in
the place of its darkened shadow the sinking sun
was blinking in his face; the whole western sky all
golden. There was no vestige of the flat salt-clear-
ing at the base of the mountain. Of the two thou-
sand cattle milling in the dust not a one remained.
The man crossed himself in stupor. Mechanically
he put the spurs to the pinto.

But the mustang would not. Another struggle
with bucking, fighting, maddened horseflesh. The
cow-man must needs bring in all the skill of his
training; but by the time he had conquered his
mind had settled within some scope of comprehen-
sion.

The pony had good reasons for his terror. This
time" though the man's mind reeled it did not go
dumb at the clash of immensity. Not only had the
whole mountain been torn away, but its roots as
well. The whole thing was up-side down; the world
torn to its entrails. In place of what had been the
height was a gulf so deep that its depths were
blackness.

He was standing on the brink. He was a cool
man, was Pizzozi; but it was hard in the con-
fusion of such a miracle to think clearly ; much less
to reason. The prancing mustang was snorting
with terror. The man glanced down.

The very dizziness of the gulf, sheer, losing itself
into shadows and chaos overpowered him, his mind

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

now clear enough for perception reeled at the dis-
tance. The depth was nauseating. His whole body
succumbed to a sudden qualm of weakness: the
sickness that comes just before falling. He went
limp in the saddle.

But the horse fought backward; warned by in-
stinct it drew back from the sheer banks of the
gulf. It had no reason but its nature. At the in-
stant it sensed the snapping of the iron will of its
master. In a moment it had turned and was racing
on its wild way out of the mountains. At supreme
moments a cattle horse will always hit for home.
The pinto and its limp rider were fleeing on the
road to Jackson.

Pizzozi had no knowledge of what had occurred
in Oakland. To him the whole thing had been but
a flash of miracle ; he could not reason. He did not
curb his horse. That he was still in the saddle was
due more to the near-instinct of his training than
to his volition.

He did not even draw up at the cabin. That he
could make better time with his motor than with his
pinto did not occur to him; his mind was far too
busy; and, now that the thing was passed, too full
of terror. It was forty-four miles to town ; it was
night and the stars were shining when he rode into
Jackson.

CHAPTER IV.

"MAN— A GREAT LITTLE BUG"

And what of Charley Huyck? It was his antici-
pation, and his training which leaves us here to tell
the story. Were it not for the strange manner of
his rearing, and the keen faith and appreciation of
Dr. Robold there would be to-day no tale to tell.
The little incident of the burning-glass had grown.
If there is no such thing as Fate there is at least
something that comes very close to being Destiny.

On this night we find Charley at the observatory
in Arizona. He is a grown man and a great one,
and though mature not so very far drawn from the
lad we met on the street selling papers. Tall,
slender, very slightly stooped and with the same
idealistic, dreaming eyes of the poet. Surely no
one at first glance would have taken him for a scien-
tist. Which he was and was not.

Indeed, there is something vastly different about
the science of Charley Huyck. Science to be sure,
but not prosaic. He was the first and perhaps
the last of the school of Dr. Robold, a peculiar
combination of poetry and fact, a man of vision, of
vast, far-seeing faith and idealism linked and based
on the coldest and sternest truths of materialism.
A. peculiar tenet of the theory of Robold: "True
science to be itself should be half poetry." Which
any of us who have read or been at school know it
is not. It is a peculiar theory and though rather
wild still with some points in favor.

We all of us know our schoolmasters; especially
those of science and what they stand for. Facts,
facts, nothing but facts; no dreams or romance.
Looking back we can grant them just about the
emotions of cucumbers. We remember their cold,
hard features, the prodding after fact, the accumu-
lation of data. Surely there is no poetry in them.

Yet we must not den^r that they have been by
far the most potent of all men in the progress of
civilzation. Not even Robold would deny it.

The point is this:

The doctor maintained that from the beginning
the progress of material civilization had been along
three distinct channels; science, invention, and ad-
ministration. It was simply his theory that the
first two should be one; that the scientist deal not
alone with dry fact but with invention, and that
the inventor, unless he is a scientist, has mastered
but half his trade. "The really great scientist
should be a visionary," said Robold, "and an in-
ventor is merely a poet, with tools."

Which is where we get Charley Huyck. He
was a visionary, a scientist, a poet with tools, the
protege of Dr. Robold. He dreamed things that no
scientist had thought of. And we are thankful for
his dreaming.

The one great friend of Huyck was Professor
Williams, a man from Charley's home city, who had
known him even back in the days of selling papers.
They had been cronies in boyhood, in their teens,
and again at College. In after years, when Huyck
had become the visionary, the mysterious Man of
the Mountain, and Williams a great professor of
astronomy, the friendship was as strong as ever.

But there was a difference between them. Wil-
liams was exact to acuteness, with not a whit of
vision beyond pure science. He had been reared in
the old stone-cold theory of exactness; he lived in
figures. He could not understand Huyck or his
reasoning. Perfectly willing to follow as far as
facts permitted he refused to step off into specu-
lation.

Which was the point between them. Charley
Huyck had vision; although exact as any man, he
had ever one part of his mind soaring out into
speculation. What is, and what might be, and the
gulf between. To bridge the gulf was the life
work of Charley Huyck.

In the snug little office in Arizona we find them;
Charley with his feet poised on the desk and Wil-
liams precise and punctilious, true to his training,
defending the exactness of his philosophy. It was
the cool of the evening; the sun was just mellowing
the heat of the desert. Through the open door and
windows a cool wind was blowing. Charley was
smoking; the same old pipe had been the bane of
Williams's life at college.

"Then we know?" he was asking.

"Yes," spoke the professor, "what we know,
Charley, we know; though of course it is not much.
It is very hard, nay impossible, to deny figures. We
have not only the proofs of geology but of astro-
nomical calculation, we have facts and figures plus
our sidereal relations all about us.

"The world must come to an end. It is a hard
thing to say it, but it is a fact of science. Slowly,
inevitably, ruthlessly, the end will come. A mere
question of arithmetic."

Huyck nodded. It was his special function in
life to differ with his former roommate. He had
come down from his own mountain in Colorado just
for the delight of difference.

"I see. Your old calculations of tidal retarda-
tion. Or if that doesn't work the loss of oxygen
and the water."

"Either one or the other; a matter of figures; the
earth is being drawn every day by the sun: its ro-
tation is slowing up; when the time comes it will

AMAZING STORIES

act to the sun in exactly the same manner as the

moon acts to the earth to-day."

"I understand. It will be a case of eternal night
for one side of the earth, and eternal day for the
other. A case of burn up or freeze up."

"Exactly. Of if it doesn't reach to that, the
water gas will gradually lose out into sidereal
space # and we will go to desert. Merely a ques-
tion of the old dynamical theory of gases; of the
molecules to be in motion, to be forever colliding
and shooting out into variance.

"Each minute, each hour, each day we are losing
part of our atmospheric envelope. In course of
time it will all be gone; when it is we shall be all
desert. For intance, take a look outside. This is
Arizona. Once it was the bottom of a deep blue
sea. Why deny when we can already behold the
beginning."

The other laughed.

"Pretty good mathematics at that, professor.
Only—"

"Only?"

"That it is merely mathematics."

■"Merely mathematics?" The professor frowned
slightly. "Mathematics do not lie, Charlie, you
cannot get away from them. What sort of fanciful
argument are you bringing upnow?"

"Simply this," returned the other, "that you de-
pend too much on figures. They are material and
in the nature of things can only be employed in a
calculation of what may happen in the future. You
must have premises to stand on, facts. Your fig-
ures are rigid: they have no elasticity; unless your
foundations are permanent and faultless your de-
ductions will lead you only into error."

"Granted; just the point: we know where we
stand. Wherein are we in em>r?"

It was the old point of difference. Huyck was
ever crashing down the idols of pure materialism,
Williams was of the world-wide school.

"You are in error, my dear professor, in a very
little thing and a very large one."

"What is that?"

"Man."

"Man ?"

"Yes. He's a great little bug. You have left him
out of your calculation — which he will upset."

The professor smiled indulgently. "I'll allow; he
is at least a conceited bug; but you surely cannot
grant him much when pitted against the Universe.5*

"No? Did it ever occur to you, Professor, what
the Universe is? The stars for instance? Space,
the immeasurable distance of Infinity. Have you
never dreamed?"

Williams could not quite grasp him. Huyck had
a habit that had grown out of childhood. Always he
would allow his opponent to commit himself. The
professor did not answer. But the other spoke.

"Ether. You know it. Whether mind or granite.
For instance, your desert." He placed his finger
to his forehead. "Your mind, my mind — localized
ether."

"What are you driving at?"

"Merely this. Your universe has intelligence. It
has mind as well as matter. The little knot called
the earth is becoming conscious. Your deductions
are incompetent unless they embrace mind as -well

as matter, and \they cannot do it. Your mathe-
matics are worthless."

The professor bit his lip.

"Always fanciful." he commented, "and vision-
ary. Your argument is beautiful, Charley, and
hopeful. I would that it were true. But all things
must mature. Even an earth must die."

"Not our earth. You look into the past, profes-
sor, for your proof, and I look into the future.
Give a planet long enough time in maturing and it
will develop life; give it still longer and it will pro-
duce intelligence. Our own earth is just coming
into consciousness; it has thirty million years, at
least, to run."

"You mean?"

"This. That man is a great little bug. Mind:
the intelligence of the earth."

This of course is a bit dry. The conversation
of such men very often is to those who do not care
to follow them. But it is very pertinent to what
came after. We know now, everyone knows, that
Charley Huyck was right. Even Professor Wil-
liams admits it. Our earth is conscious. In less
than twenty-four hours it had to employ its con-
sciousness to save itself from destruction.

A bell rang. It was the private wire that con-
nected the office with the residence. The professor
picked up the receiver. "Just a minute. Yes? All
right." Then to his companion: "I must go over
to the house, Charley. We have plenty of time.
Then we can go up to the observatory."

Which shows how little we know about ourselves.
Poor Professor Williams ! Little did he think that
those casual words were the last he would ever
speak to Charley Huyck.

The whole world seething! The beginning of
the end ! Charley Huyck in the vortex. The next
few hours were to be the most strenuous of the
planet's history.

CHAPTER V.

APPROACHING DISASTER

It was night. The stars which had just been
coming out were spotted by millions over the sleep-
ing desert. One of the nights that are peculiar to
the country, which we all of us know so well, if not
from experience, at least from hearsay; mellow,
soft, sprinkled like salted fire, twinkling.

Each little light a message out of infinity. Cos-
mic grandeur; mind: chaos, eternity — a night for
dreaming. Whoever had chosen the spot in the
desert had picked full well. Charley had spoken
of consciousness. On that night when he gazed
up at the stars he was its personification. Surely
a good spirit was watching over the earth.

A cool wind was blowing; on its breath floated
the murmurs from the village; laughter, the song
of children, the purring of motors and the startled
barking of a dog; the confused drone of man and
his civilization. From the eminence the observa-
tory looked down upon the town and the sheen of
light, spotting like jewels in the dim glow of the
desert. To the east the mellow moon just tipping
over the mountain. Charley stepped to the window.

He could see it all. The subtle beauty that was
so akin to poetry: the stretch of desert, the moun-
tains, the light in the eastern sky; the dull level

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

shadow that marked the plain to the northward.
To the west the mountains looming black to the star
line. A beautiful night; sweetened with the breath
of desert and tuned to its slumber.

Across the lawn he watched the professor
descending the pathway under the acacias. ' An
automobile was coming up the driveway ; as it drove
up under the arcs he noticed its powerful lines and
its driver; one of those splendid pleasure cars that
have returned to favor during the last decade; the
soft purr of its motor, the great heavy tires and its
coating of dust. There is a lure about a great car
coming in from the desert. The car stopped,
Charley noted. Doubtless some one for Williams.
If it were, he would go into the observatory alone.

In the strict sense of the word Huyck was not
an astronomer. He had not made it his profes-
sion. But for all that he knew things about the
stars that the more exact professors had not
dreamed of. Charley was a dreamer. He had a
code all his own and a manner of reasoning, Be-
tween him and the stars lay a secret.

He had not divulged it, or if he had, it was in
such an open way that it was laughed at. It was
not cold enough in calculation or, even if so, was
too far from their deduction. Huyck had imagina-
tion; his universe was alive and potent; it had in-
telligence. Matter could not live without it. Man
was its manifestation; just come to consciousness.
The universe teemed with intelligence. Charley
looked at the stars.

He crossed the office, passed through the recep-
tion-room and thence to the stairs that led to the
observatory. In the time that would lapse before
the coming of his friend he would have ample time
for observation. Somehow he felt that there was
time for discovery. He had come down to Arizona
to employ the lens of his friend the astronomer.
The instrument that he had erected on his own
mountain in Colorado had not given him the full
satisfaction that he expected. Here in Arizona,
in the dry clear air, which had hitherto given such
splendid results, he hoped to find what he was after.
But little did he expect to discover the terrible
thing he did.

It is one of the strangest parts of the story
that he should be here at the very moment when
Fate and the world's safety would have had him.
For years he and Dr. Robold had been at work
on their visionary projects. They were both dream-
ers. While others had scoffed they had silently
been at their great work on kinetics.

The boy and the burning glass had grown under
the tutelage of Dr. Robold: the time was about at
hand when he could out-rival the saying of Arch-
imedes. Though the world knew it not, Charley
Huyck had arrived at the point where he could
literally burn up the earth.

But he was not sinister; though he had the
power he had of course not the slightest intention.
He was a dreamer and it was part of his dream
that man break his thraldom to the earth and reach
out into the universe. It was a great conception
and were it not for the terrible event which took
his life we have no doubt but that he would have
succeeded.

It was ten-thirty when he mounted the steps and
seated himself. He glanced at his watch: he had

a good ten minutes. He had computed before just
the time for the observation. For months he had
waited for just this moment; he had not hoped to
be alone and now that he was in solitary possession
he counted himself fortunate. Only the stars and
Charley Huyck knew the secret; and not even he
dreamed what it would amount to.

From his pocket he drew a number of papers;
most of them covered with notations; some with
drawings; and a good sized map in colors. This
he spread before him, and with his pencil began
to draw right across its face a net of lines and
cross lines. A number of figures and a rapid com-
putation. He nodded and then he made the obser-
vation.

It would have been interesting to study the face
of Charley Huyck during the next few moments.
At first he was merely receptive, his face placid
but with the studious intentness of one who has
come to the moment: and as he began to find what

he was after an eagerness of satisfaction. Then

a queer blankness; the slight movement of his body
stopped, and the tapping of his feet ceased entirely.

JFor a full five minutes an absolute intentness.
During that time he was out among the stars be-
holding what not even he had dreamed of. It was
more than a secret: and what it was only Charley
Huyck of all the millions of men could have recog-
nized. Yet it was more than even he had expected.
When he at last drew away his face was chalk-like;
great drops of sweat stood on his forehead : and the
terrible truth in his eyes made him look ten years
older.

"My God!"

For a moment indecision and strange impotence.
The truth he had beheld numbed action; from his
lips the mumbled words :

"This world; my world; our great and splendid
mankind!"

A sentence that was despair and a benediction.

Then mechanically he turned back to confirm
his observation. This time, knowing what he would
see, he was not so horrified: his mind was cleared
by the plain fact of what he was beholding. When
at last he drew away his face was settled.

He was a man who thought quickly — thank the
stars for that — and, once he thought, quick to
spring to action. There was a peril poising over
the earth. If it were to be voided there was not
a second to lose in weighing up the possibilities.

He had been dreaming all his life. He had never
thought that the climax was to be the very opposite
of what he hoped for. In his under mind he prayed
for Dr. Robold — dead and gone forever. Were he
only here to help him!

He seized a piece of paper. Over its white face
he ran a mass of computations. He worked like
lightning; his fingers plying and his mind keyed
to the pin-point of genius. Not one thing did he
overlook in his calculation. If the earth had a
chance he would find it.

There are always possibilities. He was working
out the odds of the greatest race since creation.
While the whole world slept, while the uncounted
millions lay down in fond security, Charley Huyck
there in the lonely room on the desert drew out
their figured odds to the point of infinity.

"Just one chance in a million."

AMAZING STORIES

He was going to take it. The words were not
out of his mouth before his long legs were leaping
down the stairway. In the flash of seconds his
mind was rushing into clear action. He had had
years of dreaming; all his years of study and
tutelage under Robold gave him just the training
for such a disaster.

But he needed time. Time! Time! Why was
it so precious? He must get to his own mountain.
In six jumps he was in the office.

It was empty. The professor had not returned.
He thought rather grimly and fleetingly of their
conversation a few minutes before; what would
Williams think now of science and consciousness?
He picked up the telephone receiver. While he
waited he saw out of the corner of his eye the car
in the driveway. It was —

"Hello. The professor? What? Gone down to
town? No! Well, say, this is Charley" — he was
watching the car in front of the building. "Say,
hello — tell him I have gone home, home! H-o-m-e
to Colorado — to Colorado, yes — to the mountain
— the m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n. Oh, never mind — I'll leave
a note.

He clamped down the receiver. On the desk he
scrawled on a piece of paper:
Ed:

"Look these up. I'm bound for the mountain. No
time to explain. There's a car outside. Stay with
the lens. Don't leave it. If the earth goes up you
wil 1 know that I have not reached the mountain."

Beside the note he placed one of the maps that

he had in his pocket with his pencil drew a black

cross just above the center. Under the map were
a number of computations.

It is interesting to note that in the stress of the
great critical moment he forgot the professor's title.
It was a good thing. When Williams read it he
recognized the significance. All through their life
in crucial moments he had been "Ed." to Charley.

But the note was all he was destined to find. A
brisk wind was blowing. By a strange balance of
fate the same movement that let Huyck out of the
building ushered in the wind and upset calculation.

It was a little thing, but it was enough to keep
all the world in ignorance and despair. The eddy
whisking in through the door picked up the pre-
cious map, poised it like a tiny plane, and dropped
it neatly behind a bookcase.

CHAPTER VI

A RACE TO SAVE THE WORLD

Huyck was working in a straight line. Almost
before his last words on the phone were spoken
he had requisitioned that automobile outside;
whether money or talk, faith or force, he was going
to have it. The hum of the motor sounded in his
ears as he ran down the steps. He was hatless and
in his shirt-sleeves. The driver was just putting
some tools in the car. With one jump Charley had
him by the collar.

"Five thousand dollars. if you can get me to Ro-
bold Mountain in twenty hours."

The very suddenness of the rush caught the man
by surprise and lurched him against the car, turn-
ing him half around. Charley found himself

gazing into dull brown eyes and sardonic laughter:
a long, thin nose and lips drooped at the corners,
then as suddenly tipping up — a queer creature, half
devil, half laughter, and all fun.

"Easy, Charley, easy! How much did you say?
Whisper it."

It was Bob Winters. Bob Winters and his car.
And waiting. Surely no twist of fortune could nave
been greater. He was a college chum of Huyck's
and of the professor's. If there was one man that
could make the run in the time allotted, Bob was
he. But Huyck was impersonal. With the burden
on his mind he thought of naught but his destina-
tion.

"Ten thousand!" he shouted.

The man held back his head. Huyck was far too
serious to appreciate mischief. But not the man.

"Charley Huyck, of all men. Did young Lochinvar
come out of the West? How much did you say?
This desert air and the dust, 'tis hard on the hear-
ing. She must be a young, fair maiden. Ten thou-
sand."

"Twenty thousand. Thirty thousand. Damna-
tion, man, you can have the mountain. Into the
car."

By sheer subjective strength he forced the other
into the machine. It was not until they were shoot-
ing out of the grounds on two wheels that he real-
ized that the man was Bob Winters. Still the
workings of fate.

The madcap and wild Bob of the races! Surely
Destiny was on the job. The challenge of speed
and the premium. At the opportune moment be-
fore disaster the two men were brought together.
Minutes weighed up with centuries and hours out-
balanced millenniums. The whole world slept; little
did it dream that its very life was riding north with
these two men into the midnight.

Into the midnight! The great car, the pride of
Winter's heart, leaped between the pillars. At the
very outset, madcap that he was, he sent her into
seventy miles an hour; they fairly jumped off the
hill into the village. At a full seventy-five he took
the curve; she skidded, sheered half around and
swept on.

For an instant Charley held his breath. But the
master hand held her; she steadied, straightened,
and shot out into the desert. Above the whir of
the motor, flying dust and blurring what-not, Char-
ley got the tones of his companion's voice. He had
heard the words somewhere in history.

"Keep your seat, Mr. Greely. Keep your seat!"

The moon was now far up over the mountain, the
whole desert was bathed in a mellow twilight; in the
distance the mountains brooded like an uncertain
slumbering cloud bank. They were headed straight
to the northward; though there was a better road
round about, Winters had chosen the hard, rocky
bee-line to the mountain.

He knew Huyck and his reputation ; when Charley
offered thirty thousand for a twenty-hour drive it
was not mere byplay. He had happened in at the
observatory to drop in on Williams on his way to
the coast. They had been classmates; likewise
he and Charley.

When the excited man out of the observatory had
seized him by the collar, Winters merely had laughed.
He was the speed king. The three boys who had

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

gone to school were now playing with the destiny of
the earth. But only Huyck knew it.

Winters wondered. Through miles and miles of
fleeting sagebrush, cacti and sand and desolation,
he rolled over the problem. Steady as a rock, slight-
ly stooped, grim and as certain as steel he held to
the north. Charley Huyck by his side, hatless, coat-
less, his hair dancing to the wind, all impatience.
Why was it? Surely a man even for death would
have time to get his hat.

The whole thing spelled speed to Bob Winters;
perhaps it was the infusion of spirit or the inten-
sity of his companion; but the thrill ran into his
vitals. Thirty thousand dollars — for a stake like
that — what was the balance? He had been called
Wild Bob for his daring; some had called him in-
sane; on this night his insanity was enchantment.

It was wild ; the lee of the giant roadster a whir-
ring shower of gravel: into the darkness, into the
night the car fought over the distance. The terrific
momentum and the friction of the air fought in
their faces; Huyck's face was unprotected: in no
time his lips were cracked, and long before they had
crossed the level his whole face was bleeding.

But he heeded it not. He only knew that they
were moving; that slowly, minute by minute, they
were cutting down the odds that bore disaster. In
his mind a maze of figures; the terrible sight he had
seen in the telescope and the thing impending. Why
had he kept his seci'et?

Over and again he impeached himself and Dr.
Robold. It had come to this. The whole world
sleeping and only himself to save it. Oh, for a few
minutes, for one short moment! Would he get it?

At last they reached the mountains. A rough,
rocky road, and but little traveled. Happily Winters
had made it once before, and knew it. He took it
with every bit of speed they could stand, but even
at that it was diminished to a minimum.

For hours they fought over grades and gulches,

dry washouts and boulders. It was dawn, and the

sky was growing pink when they rode down again

upon the level. It was here that they ran across

their first trouble; and it was here that Winters

began to realize vaguely what a race they might be

running.

The particular level which they had entered was

an elbow of the desert projecting into the mountains

just below a massive, newly constructed dam. The

reservoir had but lately been filled, and all was

being put in readiness for the dedication.

An immense sheet of water extending far back
into the mountains — it was intended before long
to transform the desert into a garden. Below, in the
valley, was a town, already the center of a prosper-
ous irrigation settlement ; but soon, with the added
area, to become a flourishing city. The elbow,
where they struck it, was perhaps twenty miles
across. Their northward path would take them just
outside the tip where the foothills of the opposite
mountain chain melted into the desert. Without
ado Winters put on all speed and plunged across the
sands. And then:

It was much like winking; but for all that some-
thing far more impressive. To Winters, on the left
hand of the car and with the east on the right hand,
it was much as if the sun had suddenly leaped up
and as suddenly plumped down behind the horizon— t

a vast vividness of scintillating opalescence: an
azure, flaming diamond shot by a million fire points.

Instantaneous and beautiful. In the pale dawn
of the desert air its wonder and color were beyond
all beauty. Winters caught it out of the corner of
his eye; it was so instantaneous and so illusive that
he was not certain. Instinctively he looked to his
companion.

But Charley, too, had seen it. His attitude of
waiting and hoping was vigorized into vivid action.
He knew just what it was. With one hand he
clutched Winters and fairly shouted.

"On, on, Bob! On, as you value your life. Put
into her every bit of speed you have got."

At the same instant, at the same breath came a
roar that was not to be forgotten; crunching, roll-
ing, terrible — like the mountain moving.

Bob knew it. It was the dam. Something had
broken it. To the east the great wall of water fall-
out of the mountains! A beautiful sight and ter-
rible; a relentless glassy roller fringed along its
base by a lace of racing foam. The upper part was
as smooth as crystal; the stored-up waters of the
mountain moving out compactly. The man thought
of the little town below and its peril. But Huyck
thought also. He shouted in Winter's ear:

"Never mind the town. Keep straight north. Over
yonder to the point of the water. The town will
have to drown."

It was inexorable; there was no pity; the very
strength and purpose of the command drove into
the other's understanding. Dimly now he realized
that they were really running a race against time.
Winters was a daredevil; the very catastrophe sent
a thrill of exultation through him. It was the cli-
max, the great moment of his life, to be driving at
a hundred miles an hour under that wall of water.

The roar was terrible. Before they were half
across it seemed to the two men that the very
sound would drown them. There was nothing in the
world but pandemonium. The strange flash was
forgotten in the terror of the living wall that was
reaching out to engulf them. Like insects they
whizzed in the open face of the deluge. When they
had reached the tip they were so close that the out-
running fringe of the surf was at their wheels.

Around the point with the wide open plain be-
fore them. With the flood behind them it was noth-
ing to outrun it. The waters with a wider stretch
spread out. In a few moments they had left all be-
hind them.

But Winters wondered; what was the strange
flash of evanescent beauty? He knew this dam and
its construction; to outlast the centuries. It had
been whiffed in a second. It was not lightning. He
had heard no sound other than the rush of the
waters. He looked to his companion.

Hucyk nodded.

"That's the thing we are racing. We have only
a few hours. Can we make it?"

Bob had thought that he was getting all the speed
possible out of his motor. What it yielded from
that moment on was a revelation.

It is not safe and hardly possible to be driving
at such speed on the desert. Only the best car and
a firm roadway can stand it. A sudden rut, squirrel
hole, or pocket of sand is as good as destruction.
They rushed on till noon.

AMAZING STORIES

Not even Winters, with all his alertness, could
avoid it. Perhaps he was weary. The tedious
hours, the racking speed had worn him to exhaustion.
They had ceased to individualize, their way a blur,
a nightmare of speed and distance.

It came suddenly, a blind barranca — one of those
sunken, useless channels that are death to the un-
wary. No warning.

It was over just that quickly. A mere flash of
consciousness plus a sensation of flying. Two men
broken on the sands and the great, beautiful roads-
ter a twisted ruin.

CHAPTER VII.

A RIVEN CONTINENT

But back to the world. No one knew about
Charley Huyck nor what was occurring on the
desert. Even if we had it would have been impos-
sible to construe connection.

After the news out of Oakland, and the destruc-
tion of Mt. Heckla, we were far too appalled. The
whole thing was beyond us. Not even the scientists
with all their data could find one thing to work on.
The wires of the world buzzed with wonder and
with panic. We were civilized. It is really strange
how quickly, in spite of our boasted powers, we
revert to the primitive.

Superstition cannot die. Where was no explana-
tion must be miracle. The thing had been repeated.
When would it strike again. And where?

There was not long to wait. But this time the
stroke was of far more consequence and of far more
terror. The sheer might of the thing shook the
earth. Not a man or government that would not
resign in the face of such destruction.

It was omnipotent. A whole continent had been
riven. It would be impossible to give description
of such catastrophe; no pen can tell it any more
than it could describe the creation. We can only
follow in its path.

On the morning after the first catastrophe, at
eight o'clock, just south of the little city of Santa
Cruz, on the north shore of the Bay of Monterey,
the same light and the same, though not quite the
same, instantaneousness. Those who beheld it re-
port a vast ball of azure blue and opalescent fire
and motion ; a strange sensation of vitalized vibra-
tion; of personified living force. In shape like a
marble, as round as a full moon in its glory, but of
infinitely more beauty.

It came from nowhere; neither, from above the
earth nor below it. Seeming to leap out of nothing,
it glided or rather vanished to the eastward. Still
the effect of winking, though this time, perhaps
from a distanced focus, more vivid. A dot or
marble, like a full moon, burning, opal, soaring to

the eastward.

And instantaneous. Gone as soon as it was come;
noiseless and of phantom beauty ; like a finger of the
Omnipotent tracing across the world, and as ter-
rible. The human mind had never conceived a thing

so vast.

Beginning at the sands of the ocean the whole
country had vanished; a chasm twelve miles wide
and of unknown depth running straight to the east-
ward. Where had been farms and homes was noth-

ing; the mountains had been seared like butter.
Straight as an arrow.

Then the roar of the deluge. The waters of the
Pacific breaking through its sands and rolling into
the Gulf of Mexico. That there was no heat; was
evidenced by the fact that there was no steam. The
thing could not be internal. Yet what was it?

One can only conceive in figures. From the
shores of Santa Cruz to the Atlantic — a few sec-
onds; then out into the eastern ocean straight out
into the Sea of the Sargasso. A great gulf riven
straight across the face of North America.

The path seemed to follow the sun; it bore to the
eastward with a slight southern deviation. The
mountains it cut like cheese. Passing just north
of Fresno it seared through the gigantic Sierras
halfway between the Yosemite and Mt. Whitney,
through the great desert to southern Nevada, thence
across northern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Ar-
kansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, entering
the Atlantic at a point half-way between Brunswick
and Jacksonville. A great canal twelve miles in
width linking the oceans. A cataclysmic blessing.
Today, with thousands of ships bearing freight
over its water, we can bless that part of the dis-
aster.

But there was more to come. So far the miracle
had been sporadic. Whatever had been its force it
had been fatal only on point and occasion. In a
way it had been local. The deadly atmospheric com-
bination of its aftermath was invariable in its re-
cession. There was no suffering. The death that
it dealt was the death of obliteration. But now it
entered on another stage.

The world is one vast ball, and, though large, still
a very small place to live in. There are few of us,
perhaps, who look upon it, or even stop to think of
it, as a living being. Yet it is just that. It has its
currents, life, pulse, and its fevers; it is coordinate;
a million things such as the great streams of the
ocean, the swirls of the atmosphere, make it a place
to live in. And we are conscious only, or mostly,
through disaster.

A strange thing happened.

The great opal like a mountain of fire had riven
across the continent. From the beginning and with
each succession the thing was magnified. But it
was not until it had struck the waters of the At-
lantic that we became aware of its full potency and
its fatality.

The earth quivered at the shock, and man stood
on his toes in terror. In twenty-four hours our
civilization was literally falling to pieces. We were
powerful with the forces that we understood; but
against this that had been literally ripped from the
unknown we were insignificant. The whole world
was frozen. Let us see.

Into the Atlantic! The transition. Hitherto
silence. But now the roar of ten thousand million
Niagaras, the waters of the ocean rolling, catapult-
ing, roaring into the gulf that had been seared in
its bosom. The Gulf Stream cut in two, the cur-
rents that tempered our civilization sheared in a
second. Straight into the Sargasso Sea. The great
opal, liquid fire, luminiscent, a ball like the setting
sun, lay poised upon the ocean. It was the end
of the earth !

What was this thing? The whole world knew of

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

it in a second. And not a one could tell. In less
than forty hours after its first appearance in Oak-
land it had consumed a mountain, riven a continent,
and was drjnking up an ocean. The tangled sea of
the Sargasso, dead calm for ages, was a cataract; a
swirling torrent of maddened waters rushed to the
opal — and disappeared.

It was hellish and out of madness; as beautiful
as it was uncanny. The opal high as the Himalayas
brooding upon the water ; its myriad colors blending,
winking in a phantasm of iridescence. The beauty of
its light could be seen a thousand miles. A thing out
of mystery and out of forces. We had discovered
many things and knew much; but had guessed no
such thing as this. It was vampirish, and it was
literally drinking up the earth.

Consequences were immediate. The point of con-
tact was fifty miles across, the waters of the At-
lantic with one accord turned to the jmagnet. The
Gulf Stream veered straight from its course and
out across the Atlantic. The icy currents from
the poles freed from the warmer barrier descended
along the coasts and thence out into the Sargasso
Sea. The temperature of the temperate zone dipped
below the point of a blizzard.

The first word come out of London. Freezing!
And in July! The fruit and entire harvest of north-
ern Europe destroyed. Olympic games at Copen-
hagen postponed by a foot of snow. The river
Seine frozen. Snow falling in New York. Crops
nipped with frost as far south as Cape Hatteras.

A fleet of airplanes was despatched from the
United States and another from the west coast of
Africa. Not half of them returned. Those that did
reported even more disaster. The reports that were
handed in were appalling. They had sailed straight
on. It was like flying into the sun; the vividness of
the opalescence was blinding, rising for miles above
them alluring, drawing and unholy, and of a beauty
that was terror.

Only the tardy had escaped. It even drew their
motors, it was like gravity suddenly become vital-
ized and conscious. Thousands of machines vaulted
into the opalescence. From those ahead hopelessly
drawn and powerless came back the warning. But
hundreds could not escape.

"Back," came the wireless. "Do not come too
close. The thing is a magnet. Turn back before
too late. Against this man is insignificant."

Then like gnats flitting into fire they vanished

into the opalescence.

The others turned back. The whole world freez-
ing shuddered in horror. A great vampire was
brooding over the earth. The greatness that man
had attained to was nothing. Civilization was tot-
tering in a day. We were hopeless.

Then came the last revelation; the truth and
verity of the disaster and the threatened climax.
The water level of all the coast had gone down.
Vast ebb tides had gone out not to return. Stretches
of sand where had been surf extended far out into
the sea. Then the truth! The thing, whatever it
was, was drinking up the ocean.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

It was tragic; grim, terrible, cosmic. Out of no-
where had come this thing that was eating up the

earth. Not a thing out of all our science had there
been to warn us; not a word from all our wise men.
We who had built up our civilization, piece by piece,
were after all but insects.

We were going out in a maze of beauty into the
infinity whence we came. Hour by hour the great
orb of opalescence grew in splendor; the effect and
the beauty of its lure spread about the earth; thril-
ling, vibrant like suppressed music. The old earth
helpless. Was it possible that out of her bosom she
could not pluck one intelligence to save her? Was
there not one law — no answer?

Out on the desert with his face to the sun lay the
answer. Though almost hopeless there was still
some time and enough of near-miracle to save us.
A limping fate in the shape, of two Indians and a
battered runabout at the last moment.

Little did the two red men know the value of the
two men found that day on the desert. To them
the debris of the mighty car and the prone bodies
told enough of the story. They were Samaritans;
but there are many ages to bless them.

As it was there were many hours lost. Without
this loss there would have been thousands spared
and an almost immeasurable amount of disaster.
But we have still to be thankful. Charley Huyck
was still living.

He had been stunned; battered, bruised, and un-
conscious; but he had not been injured vitally.
There was still enough left of him to drag himself
to the old runabout and call for Winters. His com-
panion, as it happened, was in even better shape
than himself, and waiting. We do not know how

they talked the red men out of their relic — whether
by coaxing, by threat, or by force.

Straight north. Two men battered, worn, bruised,
but steadfast, bearing in that limping old motor-
car the destiny of the earth. Fate was still on the
job, but badly crippled.

They had lost many precious hours. Winters
had forfeited his right to the thirty thousand. He
did not care. He understood vaguely that there
was a stake over and above all money. Huyck said
nothing; he was too maimed and too much below
will-power to think of speaking. What had occurred
during the many hours of their unconsciousness
was unknown to them. It was not until they came
sheer upon the gulf that had been riven straight
across the continent that the awful truth dawned
on them.

To Winters it was terrible. The mere glimpse of
that blackened chasm was terror. It was bottom-
less; so deep that its depths were cloudy; the misty
haze of its uncertain shadows was akin to chaos.
He understood vaguely that it was related to that
terrible thing they had beheld in the morning. It
was not the power of man. Some force had been
loosened which was ripping the earth to its vitals.
Across the terror of the chasm he made out the
dim outlines of the opposite wall. A full twelve

miles across.

For a moment the sight overcame even Huyck
himself. Full well he knew; but knowing, as he did,
the full fact of the miracle was even more than he
expected. His long years under Robold, his scien-
tific imagination had given him comprehension.
Not puny steam, nor weird electricity, but force,
kinetics — out of the universe.

AMAZING STORIES

He knew. But knowing as he did, he was over-
come by the horror. Such a thing turned loose upon
the earth ! He had lost many hours ; he had but a
few hours remaining. The thought gave him sud-
den energy. He seized Winters by the ai*m.

"To the first town, Bob. To the first town — an
aerodome."

There was speed in that motor for all its decades.
Winters turned about and shot out in a lateral
course parallel to the great chasm. But for all his
speed he could not keep back his question.

"In the name of Heaven, Charley, what did it?
What is it?"

Came the answer; and it drove the lust of all
speed through Winters:

"Bob," said Charley, "it is the end of the world —
if we don't make it. But a few hours left. We
must have an airplane. I must make the moun-
tain."

It was enough for Wild Bob. He settled down.
It was only an old runabout; but he could get speed
out of a wheelbarrow. He had never driven a race
like this. Just once did he speak. The words were
characteristic.

"A world's record, Charley. And we're going to
win. Just watch us."

And they did.

There was no time lost in the change. The mere
fact of Huyck's name, his appearance and the man-
ner of his arrival was enough. For the last hours
messages had been pouring in at every post in the
Rocky Mountains for Charley Huyck. After the
failure of all others many thousands had thought of

him.

Even the government, unappreciative before, had
awakened to a belated and almost frantic eagerness.
Orders were out that everything, no matter what,
was to be at his disposal. He had been regarded as
visionary; but in the face of what had occurred,
visions were now the most practical things for
mankind. Besides, Professor Williams had sent out
to the world the strange portent of Huyck's note.
For years there had been mystery on that mountain.

Could it be?

Unfortunately we cannot give it the description

we would like to give. Few men outside of the reg-
ular employees have ever been to the Mountain of
Robold. From the very first, owing perhaps to the
great forces stored, and the danger of carelessness,
strangers and visitors had been barred. Then, too,
the secrecy of Dr. Robold — and the respect of his
successor. But we do know that the burning glass
had grown into the mountain.

Bob Winters and the aviator are the only ones
to tell us; the employees, one and all, chose to re-
main. The cataclysm that followed destroyed the
work of Huyck and Robold — but not until it had
served the greatest deed that ever came out of the
minds of men. And had it not been for Huyck's in-
sistence we would not have even the account that

we are giving.

It was he who insisted, nay, begged, that his com-
panions return while there was yet a chance. Full
well he knew. Out of the universe, out of space he
had coaxed the forces that would burn up the earth.
The great ball of luminous opalescence, and the

diminishing ocean!

There was but one answer. Through the imagi-

native genius of Robold and Huyck, fate had work-
ed up to the moment. The lad and the burning
glass had grown to Archimedes.

What happened?

The plane neared the Mountain of Robold. The
great bald summit and the four enormous globes of
crystal. At least we so assume. We have Winter's
word and that of the aviator that they were of the
appearance of glass. Perhaps they were not; but
we can assume it for description. So enormous
that were they set upon a plain they would have
overtopped the highest building ever constructed;
though on the height of the mountain, and in its
contrast, they were not much more than golf balls.

It was not their size but their effect that was
startling. They were alive. At least that is what
we have from Winters. Living, luminous, burning,
twisting within with a thousand blending, iridescent
beautiful colors. Not like electricity but something
infinitely more powerful. Great mysterious mag-
nets that Huyck had charged out of chaos. Glowing
with the softest light; the whole mountain bright-
ened as in a dream, and the town of Robold at its
base lit up with a beauty that was past beholding.

It was new to Winters. The great buildings and
the enormous machinery. Engines of strangest pat-
tern, driven by forces that the rest of the world
had not thought of. Not a sound; the whole works
a complicated mass covering a hundred acres, driv-
ing with a silence that was magic. Not a whir nor
friction. Like a living composite body pulsing and
breathing the strange and mysterious force that had
been evolved from Huyck's theory of kinetics. The
four great steel conduits running from the globes
down the Bide of the mountain. In the center, at
a point midway between the globes, a massive steel
needle hung on a pivot and pointed directly at the
sun.

Winters and the aviator noted it and wondered.
From the lower end of the needle was pouring a
luminous stream of pale-blue opalescence, a stream
much like a liquid, and of an unholy, radiance. But
it was not a liquid, nor fire, nor anything seen by
man before.

It was force. We have no better description than
the apt phrase of Winters. Charley Huyck was
milking the sun, as it dropped from the end of
the four living streams to the four globes that took
it into storage. The four great, wonderful living
globes; the four batteries; the very sight of their
imprisoned beauty and power was magnetic.

The genius of Huyck and Robold! Nobody but
the wildest dreamers would have conceived it. The
life of the sun. And captive to man; at his will
and volition. And in the next few minutes we were
to lose it all! But in losing it we were to save our-
selves. It was fate and nothing else.

There was but one thing more upon the moun-
tain — the observatory and another needle appar-
ently idle; but with a point much like a gigantic
phonograph needle. It rose square out of the ob-
servatory, and to Winters it gave an impression of
a strange gun, or some implement for sighting.

That was all. Coming with the speed that they
were making, the airmen had no time for further
investigation. But even this is comprehensive.
Minus the force. If we only knew more about that
or even its theory we might perhaps reconstruct the

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH

work of Charley Huyck and Dr. Robold.

They made the landing. Winters, with his na-
ture, would be in at the finish; but Charley would
not have it.

"It is death, Bob," he said. "You have a wife
and babies. Go back to the world. Go back with all
the speed you can get out of your motors. Get as
far away as you can before the end comes."

With that he bade thera a sad farewell. It was
the last spoken word that the outside world had
from Charley Huyck.

The last seen of him he was running up the steps
of his office. As they soared away and looked back
they could see men, the employees, scurrying about
in frantic haste to their respective posts and sta-
tions. What was it all about? Little did the two
aviators know. Little did they dream that it was
the deciding stroke.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MOST TERRIFIC MOMENT IN HISTORY

Still the great ball of Opalescence brooding over
the Sargasso. Europe now was frozen, and though
it was midsummer had gone into winter quarters.
The Straits of Dover were no more. The waters
had receded and one could walk, if careful, dry-
shod from the shores of France to the chalk cliffs
of England. The Straits of Gibraltar had dried up.
The Mediterranean completely land-locked, was cut
off forever from the tides of the mother ocean.

The whole world going dry ; not in ethics, but in
reality. The great Vampire, luminous, beautiful
beyond all ken and thinking, drinking up our life-
blood. The Atlantic a vast whirlpool.

A strange frenzy had fallen over mankind: men
fought in the streets and died in madness. It was
fear of the Great Unknown, and hysteria. At such
a moment the veil of civilization was torn to tatters.
Man was reverting to the primeval.

Then came £he word from Charley Huyck; flash-
ing and repeating to every clime and nation. In its
assurance it was almost as miraculous as the Vam-
pire itself. For man had surrendered.

To the People of the World :

The strange and terrible Opalescence which, for
the past seventy hours, has been playing havoc with
the world, is not miracle, nor of the supernatural,
but a mere manifestation and result of the applica-
tion of celestial kinetics. Such a thing always was
and always will be possible where there is intelli-
gence to control and harness the forces that lie
about us. Space is not space exactly, but an infinite
cistern of unknown laws and forces. We may con-
trol certain laws on earth, but until we reach out
farther we are but playthings.

Man is the intelligence of the earth. The time
will come when he must be the intelligence of a
great deal of space as well. At the present time you
are merely fortunate and a victim of a kind fate.
That I am the instrument of the earth's salvation is
merely chance. The real man is Dr. Robold. When
he picked me up on the streets I had no idea that
the sequence of time would drift to this moment.
He took me into his work and taught me.

Because he was sensitive and was laughed at, we
worked in secret. And since his death, and out of
respect to his memory, I have continued in the same

manner. But I have written down everything, all
the laws, computations, formulas — everything; and
I am now willing it to mankind.

Robolt had a theory on kinetics. It was strange
at first and a thing to laugh at; but he reduced it
to laws as potent and as inexorable as the laws of
gravitation.

The luminous Opalescence that has almost de-
stroyed us is but one of its minor manifestations.
It is a message of sinister intelligence; for back of
it all is an Intelligence. Yet it is not all sinister.
It is self-preservation. The time is coming when
eons of ages from now our own man will be forced
to employ just such a weapon for his own preserva-
tion. Either that or we shall die of thirst and
agony.

Let me ask you to remember now, that whatever
you have suffered, you have saved a world. I shall
now save you and the earth.

In the vaults you will find everything. All the
knowledge and discoveries of the great Dr. Robold,
plus a few minor findings by myself.

And now I bid you farewell. You shall soon be
free. Charley Huyck.

A strange message. Spoken over the wireless
and flashed to every clime, it roused and revived the
hope of mankind. Who was this Charley Huyck?
Uncounted millions of men had never heard his
name ; there were but few, very few who had.

A message out of nowhere and of very dubious
and doubtful explanation. Celestial kinetics! Un-
doubtedly. But the words explained nothing. How-
ever, man was ready to accept anything, so long as
it saved him.

For a more lucid explanation we must go back to
the Arizona observatory and Professor Ed. Williams.
And a strange one it was truly; a certain proof that
consciousness is more potent, far more so than
mere material ; also that many laws of our astron-
omers are very apt to be overturned in spite of their
mathematics.

Charley Huyck was right. You cannot measure
intelligence with a yard-stick. Mathematics do not
lie; but when applied to consciousness they are very
likely to kick backward. That is precisely what had
happened.

The suddenness of Huyck's departure had puz-
zled Professor Williams; that, and the note which
he found upon the table. It was not like Charley
to go off so in the stress of a moment. He had not
even taken the time to get his hat and coat. Surely
something was amiss.

He read the note carefully, and with a deal of
wonder.

"Look these up. Keep by the lens. If the world
goes up you will know I have not reached the moun-
tain."

What did he mean? Besides, there was no data
for him to work on. He did not know that an errant
breeze had plumped the information behind the
bookcase. Nevertheless he went into the observa-
tory, and for the balance of the night stuck by the

lens.

Now there are uncounted millions of stars in the
sky. Williams had nothing to go by. A needle in
the hay-stack were an easy task compared with the
one that he was allotted. The flaming mystery,

AMAZING STORIES

whatever it was that Huyck had seen, was not
caught by the professor. Still, he wondered. "If
the world goes up you will know I have not reached
the mountain." What was the meaning?

But he was not worried. The professor loved
Huyck as a visionary and smiled not a little at his
delightful fancies. Doubtless this was one of them.
It was not until the news came flashing out of Oak-
land that he began to take it seriously. Then fol-
lowed the disappearance of Mount Heckla. "If the
world goes up" — it began to look as if the words
had meaning.

There was a frantic professor during the next
few days. When he was not with the lens he was
flashing out messages to the world for Charley
Huyck. He did not know that Huyck was lying un-
conscious and almost dead upon the desert. That
the world was coming to catastrophe he knew full
well; but where was the man to save it? And most
of all, what had his friend meant by the words,
"look these up"?

Surely there must be some further information.
Through the long, long hours he stayed with the
lens and waited. And he found nothing.

It was three days. Who will ever forget them?
Surely not Professor Williams. He was sweating
blood. The whole world was going to pieces with-
out the trace of an explanation. All the mathema-
tics, all the accumulations of the ages had availed
for nothing. Charley Huyck held the secret. It
was in the stars, and not an astronomer could find it.

But with the seventeenth hour came the turn of
fortune. The professor was passing through the
offijce. The door was open, and the same fitful wind
which had played the original prank was now just
as fitfully performing restitution. Williams noticed
a piece of paper protruding from the back of the
bookcase and fluttering in the breeze. He picked it
up. The first words that he saw were in the hand-
writing of Charley Huyck. He read: ,

"In the last extremity — in the last phase when
there is no longer any water on the earth; when
even the oxygen of the atmospheric envelope has
been reduced to a minimum — man, or whatever
form of intelligence is then upon the earth, must
go back to the laws which governed his forebears.
Necessity must ever be the law of evolution. There
will be no water upon the earth, but there will be
an unlimited quantity elsewhere.

"By that time, for instance, the great planet, Jupi-
ter, will be in just a convenient state for exploita-
tion. Gaseous now, it will be, by that time, in just
about the stage when the steam and. water are
condensing into ocean. Eons of millions of years
away in the days of dire necessity. By that time
the intelligence and consciousness of the earth will
have grown equal to the task.

"It is a thing to laugh at (perhaps) just at present.
But when we consider the ratio of man's advance
in the last hundred years, what will it be in a bil-
lion? Not all the laws of the universe have been
discovered, by any means. At present we know
nothing. Who can tell?

"Aye, who can tell? Perhaps we ourselves have in
store the fate we would mete out to another. We
have a very dangerous neighbor close beside us.
Mars is in dire straits for water. And we know
there is life on Mars and intelligence! The very

fact on its face proclaims it. The oceans have dried
up; the only way they have of holding life is by
bringing their water from the polar snow-caps.
Their canals pronounce an advanced state of coop-
erative intelligence; there is life upon Mars and in
an advanced stage of evolution.

"But how far advanced? It is a small planet, and
consequently eons of ages in advance of the earth's
evolution. In the nature of things Mars cooled off
quickly, and life was possible there while the earth
was yet a gaseous mass. She has gone to her ma-
turity and into her retrogression; she is approach-
ing her end. She has had less time to produce intel-
ligence than intelligence will have— in the end —
upon the earth.

"How far has this intelligence progressed? That
is the question. Nature is a slow worker. It took
eons of ages to put life upon the earth; it took eons
of more ages to make this life conscious. How far
will it go? How far has it gone on Mars? 1 '

That was as far the the comments went. The
professor dropped his eyes to the rest of the paper.
It was a map of the face of Mars, and across its
center was a black cross scratched by the dull point
of a soft pencil.

He knew the face of Mars. It was the Ascneus
Lucus. The oasis at the juncture of a series of
canals running much like the spokes of a wheel. The
great Uranian and Alander Canals coming in at
about right angles.

In two jumps the professor was in the observa-
tory with the great lens swung to focus. It was
the great moment out of his lifetime, and the
strangest and most eager moment, perhaps, ever
lived by any astronomer. His fingers fairly twitch-
ed with tension. There before his view was the full
face of our Martian neighbor!

But was it? He gasped out a breath of startled
exclamation. Was it Mars that he gazed at; the
whole face, the whole thing had been changed be-
fore him.

Mars has ever been red. Viewed through the
telescope it has had the most beautiful tinge imag-
inable, red ochre, the weird tinge of the desert in
sunset. The color of enchantment and of hell!

For it is so. We know that for ages and ages
the planet has been burning up; that life was pos-
sible only in the dry sea-bottoms and under irriga-
tion. The rest, where the continents once were, was
blazing desert. The redness, the beauty, the en-
chantment that we so admired was burning hell.

All this had changed.

Instead of this was a beautiful shade of iridescent
green. The red was gone forever. The great
planet standing in the heavens had grown into infin-
ite glory. Like the great Dog Star transplanted.

The professor sought out the Ascrseus Lucus. It
was hard to find. The whole face had been trans-
figured; where had been canals was now the beauti-
ful sheen of green and verdure. He realized what
he was beholding and what he had never dreamed
of seeing; the seas of Mars filled up.

With the stolen oceans our grim neighbor had
come back to youth. But how had it been done. It
was horror for our world. The great luminescent
ball of Opalescence! Europe frozen and New York
a mass of ice. It was the earth's destruction. How

THE MAN WHO SAVED 1 THE EARTH

long could the thing keep up; and whence did it
come? What was it?

He sought for the Ascrseus Lucus. And he be-
held a strange sight. At the very spot where should
have been the juncture of the canals he caught what
at first looked like a pin-point flame, a strange
twinkling light with flitting glow of Opalescence.
He watched it, and he wondered. It seemed to the
professor to grow; and he noticed that the green
about it was of different color. It was winking,
like a great force, and much as if alive ; baneful.

It was what Charley Huyck had seen. The pro-
fessor thought of Charley. He had hurried to the
mountain. What could Huyck, a mere man, do
against a thing like this? There was naught to do
but sit and watch it drink of our life-blood. And
then —

It was the message, the strange assurance that
Huyck was flashing over the world. There was
no lack of confidence in the words he was speaking.
"Celestial Kinetics," so that was the answer ! Cer-
tainly it must be so with the truth before him. Wil-
liams was a doubter no longer. And Charley Huyck
could save them. The man he had humored. Eag-
erly he waited and stuck by the lens. The whole
world waited.

It was perhaps the most terrific moment since
creation. To describe it would be like describing
doomsday. We all of us went through it, and we
all of us thought the end had come; that the earth
was torn to atoms and to chaos.

The State of Colorado was lurid with a red light
of terror; for a thousand miles the flame shot above
the earth and into space. If ever spirit went out in
glory that spirit was Charley Huyck! He had come
to the moment and to Archimedes. The whole world
rocked to the recoil. Compared to it the mightiest
earthquake was but a tender shiver. The conscious-
ness of the earth had spoken!

The professor was knocked upon the floor. He

knew not what had happened. Out of the windows
and to the north the flame of Colorado, like the
whole world going up. It was the last moment.
But he was a scientist to the end. He had sprained
his ankle and his face was bleeding; but for all that
he struggled, fought his way to the telescope. And
he saw:

The great planet with its sinister, baleful, wicked
light in the center, and another light vastly larger
covering up half of Mars. What was it? It was
moving. The truth set him almost to shouting.

It was the answer of Charley Huyck and of the
world. The light grew smaller, smaller, and almost
to a pin-point on its way to Mars.

The real climax was in silence. And of all the
world only Professor Williams beheld it. The two
lights coalesced and spread out; what it was on
Mars, of course, we do not know.

But in a few moments all was gone. Only the
green of the Martian Sea winked in the sunlight.
The luminous opal was gone from the Sargasso. The
ocean lay in peace.

It was a terrible three days. Had it not been for
the work of Robold and Huyck life would have been
destroyed. The pity of it that all of their discov-
eries have gone with them. Not even Charley real-
ized how terrific the force he was about to loosen.

He had carefully locked everything in vaults for
a safe delivery to man. He had expected death, but
not the cataclysm. The whole of Mount Robold was
shorn away ; in its place we have a lake fifty miles
in diameter.

So much for celestial kinetics.

And we look to a green and beautiful Mars. We
hold no enmity. It was but the law of self-preserva-
tion. Let us hope they have enough water; and that
their seas will hold. We don't blame them, and we
don't blame ourselves, either for that matter. We
need what we have, and we hope to keep it.

(The End.)

The Thing from "Outside"

By GEORGE ALLEN ENGLAND
{Concluded)

That Marr was dead and the girl alive — that much,
at all events, was solid. He could hold to that;
he could climb back, with that, to the real world

again.

Jandron climbed back, came back. Time healed
him, as it healed the girl. After a long, long while,
they had speech together. Cautiously he sounded
her wells of memory. He saw that she recalled
nothing. So he told her white lies about capsized
canoes and the sad death — in realistically-described
rapids — of all the party except herself and him.

Vivian believed. Fate, Jandron knew, was being
very kind to both of them.

But Vivian could never understand in the least
whx her husband, not very long after marriage,

asked her not to wear a wedding-ring or any rirjg
whatever.

"Men are so queer!" covers a multitude of psychic
agonies.

Life, for Jandron — life, softened by Vivian — knit
itself up into some reasonable semblance of a nor-
mal pattern. But when, at lengthening intervals,
memories even now awake — memories crawling amid
the slime of cosmic mysteries that it is madness
to approach — or when at certain times Jandron sees
a ring of any sort, his heart chills with a cold that
reeks of the horrors of Infinity.

And from shadows past the boundaries of our
universe seem to beckon Things that, God grant,
can never till the end of time be known on earth.

(THE END)

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